GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist has written a blog about science since 4 August 2004 (the early years are archived 
Click for larger image in its own window.
This picture is a visualisation of the entire tree of life. The tree of life (cellular organisms) has three main branches;
- The bacteria (unicellular organisms that lack a nucleus) which are in focus in this picture and represented by orange nodes.
- The archaea are probably more closely related to the eukaryotes than they are to the bacteria even though they lack a cell nucleus and represent some of the most extreme forms of life on earth. They are represented by red nodes and near the top and in the background of the picture.
- The eukarya (all cellular organisms with a cell nucleus) are represented by yellow nodes and are located on the left hand side and in the background of the picture.
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Comments
Ooo, pretty! I love scientific visualisations.
Posted by: Joshua | February 12, 2007 3:12 PM
Do you have a larger version of this (larger than your flickr version)? I'd love to make it my desktop pic, just to remind me where I am.
Beautiful!
Posted by: Joel Bass | February 12, 2007 4:28 PM
no bigger images, unfortunately!
Posted by: GrrlScientist | February 12, 2007 4:52 PM
Orange, red, and yellow? They couldn't have thrown a bone to the 10% of male scientists who are red-green colorblind?
Grump.
Getting Things Done in Academia
Posted by: Mike Kaspari | February 12, 2007 4:59 PM
What is the red X at the top of the image for?
z.
Posted by: s. zeilenga | February 12, 2007 5:12 PM
That's excellent!
Posted by: MikeQ | February 12, 2007 6:35 PM
We are soooooo outnumbered! Is there an image anywhere that is 3D/graphically rotates 3D? Does it look like a spiral of some kind or more like the representations of the galaxies in the universe?
Chardyspal
Posted by: Chardyspal | February 12, 2007 9:44 PM
Intrigued I went searching.
http://www.ii.uib.no/~tim/frontPages/treesPage.shtml allows you to see an animation of this and another more detailed projection of Eutheria (Placentals) only. For me the animation is slow as I have wideband rather than real broadband, may be better for others.
It also has a larger image, may be suitable for a desktop pic.
It is humbling to see how little of life is on our branch.
Posted by: Chris' Wills | February 13, 2007 2:11 AM
More wandering;
http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus has some galleries of other plots and allow you to download the program.
Also a range of other plotting techniques.
Posted by: Chris' Wills | February 13, 2007 2:17 PM